Pete Hines, Shawn Layden, and Shannon Loftis tell us how they really feel.
Former executives from Bethesda, Microsoft, and Sony have criticised gaming subscriptions like Xbox Game Pass, Nintendo Switch Online, and PlayStation Plus, questioning if said services place profit ahead of sustainability.
Former senior vice president of global marketing and communications at Bethesda, Pete Hines, led the conversation in an interview with DBLTAP.
“Subscriptions have become the new four letter word, right? You can’t buy a product anymore. When you talk about a subscription that relies on content, if you don’t figure out how to balance the needs of the service and the people running the service with the people who are providing the content – without which your subscription is worth jack shit – then you have a real problem,” Hines said as part of a much larger interview.
“You need to properly acknowledge, compensate and recognize what it takes to create that content and not just make a game, but make a product. That tension is hurting a lot of people, including the content creators themselves, because they’re fitting into an ecosystem that is not properly valuing and rewarding what they’re making.”
The article makes reference to several Bethesda titles that launched on Xbox Game Pass, including Tango’s Hi-Fi Rush and Arkane’s Redfall. The studios behind both those titles were closed down by Microsoft in May 2024, though Tango has since found new life at Krafton.
Former president and CEO of Sony Interactive Entertainment America Shawn Layden shared Hines’ words on LinkedIn, adding, “the question is not, ‘is the service profitable for the platform’. Is it healthy and helpful for the developer is what we need to ask.”
Layden’s thoughts on subscription services are well known; back in August, he told GamesIndustry.biz, “I’m not a big supporter of the ‘Netflix of gaming’ idea. I think it is a danger.”
Shannon Loftis, former vice president of Xbox Game Studios, then added her thoughts on Layden’s post, saying, “As a longtime first party Xbox developer, I can attest that Pete is correct.”
“While [Xbox Game Pass] can claim a few victories with games that otherwise would have sunk beneath the waves,” she continued, citing Human Fall Flat as an example. “The majority of game adoption… comes at the expense of retail revenue, unless the game is engineered from the ground up for post-release monetization.”
Xbox Game Pass was launched back in 2017, with Sony following suit and revamping PlayStation Plus in mid-2022. Both services offer tiered-subscription programs, with many tiers offering a digital rental scheme of sorts inside an ever-changing library of titles on offer.
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